Maintaining adequate interior and exterior lighting levels is a significant endeavor for many building facility operators. Maintaining proper light intensity is considered to be an important factor for various building usages, including:
(a) Facilitating retail sales from display floor areas; retail store operators have disclosed that there is a correlation with the amount of light used to illuminate products and the store aisles, and the length of time a consumer will remain in a store purchasing items;
(b) Providing adequate egress lighting, particularly during emergency conditions such as loss of normal electrical power; recent power outages due to severe storms and/or terrorist incidents have a number of military and civilian personnel disclosing that lighting was insufficient in emergency exit areas in places open to the public; and
(c) Providing adequate workspace lighting for various human work activities. For example, there are some studies showing that overall moods of employees and their productivity are impacted by the amount of lighting in the workplace.
There are a number of lighting control and monitoring systems used to turn on and off lights in stores, malls, parking lots, etc. These systems sometimes include power management to make the power usage as efficient as possible.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,862,391 to Salas et al., which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference, discloses a power management control system comprising a computer (server) having standard RS485 interface cards and adapters installed in its I/O slots defining multiple industry standard Modbus RTU networks and Ethernet TCP/IP networks and the computer contains software for monitoring and controlling power usage/consumption captured by remotely controlled devices (Abstract). There is no on-board or downloadable capability for software/firmware power management or for direct device-to-device communication.
US Patent Application 2004/0024483 A1 to Holcombe, which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference, discloses a system, method and article of manufacture for monitoring and optimizing utility usage in an entity. Paragraph 0069 at page 4 discloses as an option a central control unit may interact with appliances or interface modules for altering their cycle as needed or turn them on or turn them off at different times.
US Patent Application 2003/0050737 A1 to Osann, Jr., which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference, discloses an energy-smart home system (see FIG. 1) that requires energy monitoring and control points installed at switches, plugs, and other points of energy use and communication with a power line data link to a centrally located intelligent device such as a PC, residential gateway, and the like for viewing and energy control functions. A separate electrical breaker box supplements the distributed energy monitoring and control points. The energy-smart system of Osann, Jr. provides internet access to the centrally located intelligent device, utility company, and other service providers (e.g., security) as well as a utility company power meter. Subloads controlled can include direct wired subloads, such as an air-conditioner or furnace.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,034,233 to Leyde, which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference, discloses a power monitoring and regulating circuit and method having an analog input representing power delivery rate and a digital output for controlling the on/off states of a plurality of loads (see column 2, lines 37 to 67; claim 1). This invention contemplates the use of a settable set point which through circuitry and not firmware the invention seeks to attain to regulating the number of loads connected to the power source.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,167,679 to Leyde, et al., which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference, discloses floating set point control circuit and method for use with electrical load control systems. Column 1, lines 1-36 and claims 1, 8 and 16 disclose an electrical load control systems that continuously measures the rate of power delivered to a plurality of loads and when a predetermined rate, termed a set point, is exceeded or conversely, then one or more of the plurality of loads is disconnected (shed) or connected (added).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,345,162 to Hammer, et al., which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference, discloses a method and apparatus for load-shedding duty cycling that overrides a normal thermostat control (see claim 1). A signal from a power utility company is received to the thermostat, such as a radio signal. This invention does not measure power use and controls a single load.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,181,985 to O'Donnell et al., which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference, discloses a load shed module for use in a power distribution system that includes facility for delivering both electrical power and electrical power rate information from a utility supplier. This invention is physically placed between and interfaces to a utility power source and a load and requires manually setting a rotary switch on the to a threshold rate. The setting of the rotary switch is compared by the invention with a rate received from a utility supplier. If the received rate exceeds the manually set rate the invention disconnects a load from the power source.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,301,527 B1 to Butland, et al., which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference, discloses a Utilities Communications Architecture (UCA) compliant power management control system. Column 2, lines 9-25, discloses first and second intelligent electronic devices communicating over a first and second network with first and second servers that process data received from first and second intelligent electronic devices to manage power use. TCP/IP and RS-485 protocol are supported (claims 2, 8, and 10 ) as well as other protocols. This invention envisions software loaded into computers and servers to provide access to and control of power management data and functions, respectively, of intelligent electronic power management and control devices of an electrical distribution system.
Dencor Inc., Denver, Colo., US (http://www.dencorinc.com) provides an expansion module for controlling multiple loads via a single unit in order to reduce energy consumption. Reliable Controls, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (http://www.reliablecontrols.com) provides a MACH-Global Controller that provides LAN communication through nine ports to 128 universal input-output hard points, and a MACH1 and MACH2 controller each supporting communication ports and eight inputs and outputs as well as up to three expansion cards by the MACH2. These systems are described as providing cost effective management of power consumption, e.g.,                “The Reliable Controls® MACH-System is a computer-based system of hardware and software products designed to control the comfort and manage the energy consumption of the environment with commercial buildings. The system consists of: programmable controllers which have inputs and outputs that are connected to sensors and actuators used to measure and control the environment; network communications to network the controllers to facilitate sharing data and archiving data; PCs to run the various software programs used to program, operate and backup the system.” (from web-site FAQ)        
However, there is no enabling description of a system that is used for automatic detection that elements of a lighting system (e.g. bulbs, ballasts) require maintenance based on measured values. Nor is the technology employed to manage energy consumption provided on either web-site. The Reliable Controls products do not address non-commercial applications.
The above referenced Web pages primarily describe individual control devices and do not offer any type of integrated power monitoring and control device, nor do they disclose or suggest a device that monitors and alerts when components such as bulbs and ballasts need replacement.
Thus, multi-load self-contained power management devices and power management systems including a remote control PC or Server system therefor are old in the art. Prior art power management devices perform fixed functions and devices exist that can respond to remote control over hardwired networks. None provide an interfaced control component local to and combined with a monitoring device and none include on-board control software/firmware to capture power measurements and use these measurements to manage multiple loads according to algorithms. Further, none comprise on-board, downloadable software/firmware interfaced with a power monitoring unit or integrated with a power monitor in a single electronic unit and that can be directly networked with like devices to manage power for single or multiple site configurations of loads.
Nor do any of the above-discussed patents disclose a system that monitors when components such as bulbs and ballasts require maintenance, so that the lighting system provides the light at the predetermined power level that it was intended for normal operation.
Also, repair activities must be occasionally undertaken to maintain lighting systems at desired and appropriate levels of light intensity. Light bulb and ballast technologies, as typically employed today, only provide a relatively short service life—much shorter than what is expected from the overall building lighting system. Today, such repair activities are generally inefficient labor-intensive processes characterized by periodic manual visual inspections—or driven by complaints from building occupants after prolonged periods of inadequate lighting. Both of these repair activities are not very different from the activities of maintenance personnel from almost 100 years ago when electric lighting was first installed in office buildings. Egress lighting deficiencies are frequently discovered as a result of risk to human safety during emergency conditions, often where evacuees later complained. Thus there is a need both from at least an efficiency standpoint and from a safety standpoint to improve on the method of monitoring lighting systems.